The Hottest UX Articles to Wrap Up the Summer

Summer is rapidly coming to an close with the end of August right around the corner. With that, I am introducing the hottest user experience articles to get your weekend reading going. Enjoy!

1. A UX Horror Story: Ways to Make Your UX Partner Lose Their S#!tby Stephen Frishman, published on CMS Wire

I have come full circle. Several years ago, I wrote a personal blog entitled “What’s Holding Back UX” whose premise was that pretentiousness was the mortal enemy of the UX discipline. Just over a year ago, I chose a more constructive narrative and wrote an article that identified “a spirit of inclusion” and “building more designers” as “hallmarks of greatness” for UX practitioners (while creating great designs was identified as a hallmark of the very good) — you can read that UX article here. I have now had a first hand experience seeing the flip side of the coin and have to say that I fully understand the frustration.

2. LinkedIn gives Groups a makeover for better UXpublished on Brafton

LinkedIn has become one of the most important web content distribution channels for B2B brands, and the network continues to make upgrades to amplify its appeal. The network’s most recent facelift affected LinkedIn Groups – the gathering place for professionals and industry leaders. An official blog post announced the update, which includes better user experience and more attractive interface.

As a business owner, what can be worse than having a visitor leave your site due to an annoyance that you can control? You may lose sales due to numerous factors that are out of your control. But what about the ones that you can control? Wouldn’t it be great to have a nice, clean website so that you can focus on optimizing the things that matter?

Whitespace is becoming an increasingly popular design element for websites. The term was originally coined in print design and describes “the absence of text and graphics”. At the same time, whitespace is more than an empty space. It’s also “the overall airiness or density of the page including space between lines of type (leading), text offset around graphics, size of margins, and heaviness or lightness of the fonts”.